Gadgetory

the Nintendo switch dock is not great don't get me wrong it gets the job done and there is a certain cool factor about the way that you dock the switch into it where you slide it in and remove your joy Kahn's it's all very pretty but there's a lot of stuff about this things design that could just be well better for instance it's much bigger than it needs to be especially when you realize that all the actual working parts of the system it's just this little square area right here and then there's the way that the switch just sits inside of the dock where the front plate can actually scratch your screen and there's not really any great way for it to ventilate the heat coming out of the switch so as a result some people that play for a lot of hours and dock mode are seeing their switches lightly warm and because of all this there's a lot of third-party companies that are making alternative options for people that might fix some of these issues so let's take a look at them first one of the simplest solutions is to take the switch talk and downsize it as much as possible or you get a little guy like this pretty much all these companies have done is take the important working parts of the switch which is this one main board inside right here and build a shell around it so you're still getting all the important bits you're getting all your ports on this side and this side right here and you're freeing the switch because you're not building this kind of crazy encapsulated thing around it so you're realizing the heat actually properly dissipate and there's no risk of scratching your screen or anything like that and because it's so much smaller it's way more portable you can put this in a bag backpack maybe even a pocket it's just a lot more convenient now well that first dock is much smaller than the official Nintendo switch one we can go even tinier and that's where a design like this comes in now this pretty much just abandons the idea entirely the switch dock is well a dock and instead just turns it into a cable so you're getting it as small as possible or this could easily fit inside of a pocket but there are some downsides to this redesign first off you are losing some of the ports instead of having access to all three USB ports you're just getting one right here but you're still getting the most important bits with the HDMI and USB si+ since it's now a cable design the switch isn't really designed to easily sit down on its own with a cable like this so you're either gonna have to just lay the switch down next to it where you're plugging it in or create some kind of secondary setup where there's a mount the switches going into and you plug this either way the main takeaway here awesome portability at the expense of some functionality now maybe you want to go in the opposite direction maybe you don't care at all about the functionality of the doc instead or a little bothered by the fact that it's pretty plain and simple looking and you want something flashy there's a couple options for that as well first off we talked about this item a little bit it's the doc dunk it's a doctrine PvP that you put the doc inside of and it adds these cool light-up face plates which make it way more animated and cool looking this is the Zelda one which I personally like a lot more but when you buy it you also get a Mario Odyssey design that's pretty cool too now the lineup dock isn't far enough for you and you want to do something a little crazier you can find all kinds of homemade custom jobs that are insane dock designs like we found this one at sea which is based on the ship from Super Mario Odyssey which is clearly 3d printed but really freaking cool especially the fact they actually put a little place here you could set down your favor me bow which you know we got to tie in something here now there are some eccentric things that come with finding stuff like this though for instance because this is designed just to look cool and not actually be well functional you're still running into the same problems the dock has where you could risk scratching the screen if you're not careful it doesn't really vent heat very well and because this is designed to look like the ship and not actually match the dimensions of the switch it might take a couple tries to actually dock it properly also this isn't actually a dock instead just plugs into an extension cable that you have to plug in to the regular dock so you kind of to build a setup around it and takes a little extra work and it's a little odd design but at the same time this is really cool to show off now if you're shopping around online for a dock and none of the ones you're really seeing or fitting the bill there is always the option to just do it yourself it's really surprisingly not that hard to do with the switch dock and if you're looking around online you'll see all kinds of people Shelley shelling selling different shell designs that's a seashell situation right there different shell designs that you can just take the dock you already own open it up take out the insides and put them into or you could do something like we did where you just find something that can fit the dock parts and actually make a cool unique design like this Legend of Zelda cart that we put one into now if you're thinking about doing this and it sounds really intimidating because like oh no I have to take the dock apart it really isn't that tough the only barrier to entry is owning the right kind of screwdrivers so you can open it up that or you could just be very careful and very precise with the hammer and pray you don't break the insides